Every Pulitzer Prize Refused, Returned, or Rescinded in History

The Pulitzer Prize was first awarded in 1917. In the 109 years since, the Board has handed out somewhere north of 2,500 prizes across journalism, letters, drama, and music. In that same span, there have been exactly three Pulitzer Prizes refused by their recipients or returned after the fact. The Board itself has never voluntarily rescinded one, despite considerable public pressure to do so in cases that include a New York Times correspondent who covered up the Soviet famine, an Alex Haley book that turned out to have invented portions of its history, and a sitting president of the United States demanding the revocation of a 2018 prize over Russia coverage. The Board, with a consistency bordering on the geological, simply declines.

What this means is that the universe of Pulitzers refused, returned, or rescinded is unusually small. Sinclair Lewis turned one down in 1926 because he was still angry about a different prize five years earlier. William Saroyan turned one down in 1940 because he disapproved of prizes on principle, although the principle did not extend to the Academy Award he accepted three years later. Janet Cooke returned hers in 1981 after the Washington Post discovered that the eight-year-old heroin addict at the center of her story did not exist.

Three names. Two refusals and a single return. That is the complete list.

Sinclair Lewis (1926, refused)

Sinclair Lewis had been waiting five years to refuse the Pulitzer Prize when the Board finally gave him one. In 1921, the novel jury had unanimously recommended his bestseller Main Street for the prize. The Columbia University trustees overruled them, deciding the book failed the ‘wholesome’ requirement in the Pulitzer Plan of Awards, and gave the prize to Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence instead. Lewis called it ‘the Main Street burglary’ and began plotting his revenge.

He waited. In 1923, the jury skipped him entirely. In 1926, they unanimously chose Arrowsmith, his novel about an idealistic young doctor. Columbia Secretary Frank D. Fackenthal wrote to congratulate him a few days before the announcement. Lewis told his publisher he intended to refuse it, with what he called ‘a polite but firm letter which I shall let the press have, and which ought to make it impossible for anyone ever to accept the novel prize thereafter without acknowledging themselves as willing to sell out.'

He kept his word. On May 6, 1926, three days after the announcement, the Associated Press carried his rejection letter. It ran in newspapers across the country. Lewis denounced prizes as corrupting influences on writers, who would inevitably tailor their work to suit ‘the prejudices of a haphazard committee.' Four years later he accepted the 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first American to win it. He raised no philosophical objection at all.

William Saroyan (1940, refused)

The Time of Your Life was written in six days. William Saroyan banged it out on a cheap typewriter at the Great Northern Hotel in New York in 1939, a five-act play set in a San Francisco waterfront bar populated by drifters and dreamers and a tap-dancing newsboy played on Broadway by Gene Kelly. It opened on October 25, 1939, to mixed reviews. It lost $25,000 during its initial run. Then it won everything.

In May 1940, The Time of Your Life became the first play in history to win both the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Saroyan accepted the first and refused the second, on the grounds that ‘commerce should not patronize the arts.' The position was a touch awkward given that he had just collected the Critics’ Circle award the same week, but Saroyan was not a man troubled by inconsistency.

His stated reason, in interviews afterward, was that The Time of Your Life was ‘no more great or good’ than anything else he had written, which he considered a problem with prize-giving in general rather than a comment on his own work. He spent the rest of his life refusing to apologize for the refusal and accepting almost every other award he was offered. The 1943 Academy Award for Best Story, in particular, posed no philosophical difficulty whatsoever.

Janet Cooke (1981, returned)

The story was beautifully written. ‘Jimmy’s World’ ran on the front page of the Washington Post on September 28, 1980, more than 2,000 words describing an eight-year-old heroin addict with needle marks ‘freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin, brown arms.' Marion Barry’s administration launched a citywide search. Cooke refused to reveal Jimmy’s address, citing source protection. Some at the Post were skeptical. Bob Woodward, then assistant managing editor, submitted the story for the Pulitzer anyway.

She won on April 13, 1981. The unraveling started the same day. The Toledo Blade, Cooke’s previous employer, was preparing a celebratory story when editors noticed her Pulitzer biography didn’t match their personnel records. The Vassar magna cum laude was actually one year at Vassar. The master’s from Toledo was a bachelor’s. The Sorbonne year and the languages were inventions. By the next morning, after eleven and a half hours of questioning, Cooke confessed that Jimmy did not exist.

Ben Bradlee returned the prize by telegram on April 15. The Board re-awarded the Pulitzer to Teresa Carpenter of the Village Voice. Cooke remains the only person ever to return a Pulitzer. The Board itself has been asked many times since to revoke one on its own initiative. Walter Duranty’s Soviet propaganda was not enough. Alex Haley’s fabricated history was not enough. The 1619 Project and the 2018 Russia coverage were not enough. Forty-five years on, the only way out remains the same. You have to give it back yourself.